Delicious LiveJournal Links for 5-13-2009

[andrewducker]

• Collaborative music
  Make your own....
  (tags: music video art collaboration)
• What Makes Us Happy?
  Long piece on the long-running Harvard Longtitudinal Study - running since 1937.
  (tags: happiness psychology research)
• Gamers Unravel the Secret Life of Protein
  I hadn't heard of this at all. Damned impressive stuff, using gamers to solve real world puzzles.
  (tags: puzzle gaming proteins life biology)
• How to help someone use a computer
  Some very good advice for the computer-savvy here
  (tags: teaching computers technology)
• Computerised CBT
  The NHS is trialling it at the moment. Sounds positive, if not as good as a real counsellor would be (obviously).
  (tags: cbt technology NHS UK)

Comments

Computerised CBT:

[princealbert.livejournal.com]

"You’re in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise, Angela, it’s crawling toward you. You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back, Angela. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t, not without your help. But you’re not helping. Why is that, Angela?"

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

I've done the computerised CBT course discussed in that article -- it's well past trialling, it's often the most accessible option! -- and actually, I found it *better* than a real counsellor. It didn't say things that I took the wrong way (like the counsellor who thought it was funny that I dislike phone calls) and if I wasn't in the mood or the right emotional frame for a session, I could retake it or postpone it without hassle. I skipped the bits that really didn't relate to my issues (since I'd already done some CBT before and had some idea of what was and wasn't relevant) and spent more time on the bits that made most sense. I would very strongly recommend this method ...

... which is a long-winded way of disagreeing with your '(obviously)'!

[andrewducker]

Thank you - having that kind of feedback is really useful!

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

posted that comment, and some further stuff, on my LJ -- feel free to link if you like, it's a public post!

[meaningrequired.livejournal.com]

Norway already has CBT... a clinical psych from there did a 6 month research placement here was involved in it. Very interesting.

Obv lots of advantages and disadvantages to computer vs human counselors.

[princealbert.livejournal.com]

Last time I went for CBT here in Edinburgh I was handed a ton of self assessment sheets to do at home. Never saw any qualified. Never did the sheets. [My main problem with my dysthymia is complete lack of motivation.]

Previous CBT with clinical psychologist lasted 11 months before his supervisor discharged me because I would never reach the epiphany bit and start to change.

[meaningrequired.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, did anyone ask you what kind of therapy might help?

Because I don't think CBT works for everyone. I was offered CBT and hypnotherapy. I like structure, and I don't think hypnotherapy would work for me. But I was at least asked :)

[princealbert.livejournal.com]

I was asked but didn't know what most of the therapies actually entailed. Nobody handed my a booklet or a list and said look them up and come back next week.

When I first started to ask for help in '96 I was on a waiting list for nearly 4 years, then was offered a "quick fix" of 6 weeks. I got a decent job, life improved but when that job was taken away from me I went back to my GP because I was told I'd be shortlisted if i crashed. Bullshit. Another 2 years on the waiting lists.

I did start CBT through Hypnotherapy privately but it didn't last long when both myself and the practitioner suddenly lost relatives and had to look after estates.

My only caveat back in '96 was I would not do group therapies because I was too well known in Edinburgh through my activities at the time.

[endless-psych.livejournal.com]

There are a shitload of therapies (some deserving of being called "therapies") out there. Medical model means that the ones that work for most people are the ones that will be funded and therefore offered.

Complex interventions, akin to CBT, are probably the way forward in most mental health issues (they tend to outperform drugs and such anyway) but they take ages to tweak and design and trial.

The problem with multiple therapies is a lot of them boil down to the same thing (the talking cure or some combination of this with some activity be it art/music/horse riding/whatever) and that's just not (to probably come across as sounding mercenary when I am aiming for realistic) cost effective.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

ELIZA sure has come a long way.

-- Steve still remembers typing a version out of Byte (?) into the school's Commodore PET; man, does one dropped line of data change the output...

Fold.it

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Wow! [FX: is absolutely stunned]

Back in the early eighties, protein molecular modelling involved taking an approximate set of atomic coordinates (generally located at the peaks of electron density calculated from x-ray diffraction data) and calculating a "best fit" to known geometry (fixing bond lengths and angles to standard values, and allowing (most) torsion angles to vary) before using a graphics box (such as an Evans & Sutherland PS300 with the stereo glasses mod) back-ended by a VAX to display the molecule and electron cloud. You could calculate an approximate energy for the assemblage (overnight, or during a very long coffee break) and then reload the coordinates into another program, where you could define bonds you wanted to rotate parts of the molecule round. If you thought the coordinates looked better (maybe you'd just found some hydrogen bonds, or a hydrophobic pocket to lay a side group in), you could dump them out and run another energy calculation.

If the energy was better, you'd use the new atomic positions to recalculate the electron density map and hence refine the x-ray data (definitely an overnight run). Rinse and repeat....

For even more fun and games, we'd take a protein of unknown structure but of homologous sequence to a known one, and make the analogous folds - and then we'd try and dock molecular fragments into the active sites as we looked for possible (ant)agonists or inhibitors.

Years, I spent in that line. And now it's a game!

I'm truly amazed (but I wish the game would let you read in Brookhaven PDB format - I've got a few things I still want to look at from those days).

Re: Fold.it

[andrewducker]

It is a fantastic use of modern technology to solve problems that used to take incredibly expensive amounts of computing power. And a great way to harness people's gameplaying instincts.